You know, it's getting harder and harder to come up with a blurb before the month name. Fortunately, I won't have to do it much longer, because we're now entering

OCTOBER

After learning of the CDC's treachery last month, the team now can't stop the Zodiac group from throwing up military bases wherever they damn well please. A new one popped up in Tokyo.

Our mission briefing for this month states that we must search for Patient Zero, to be found somewhere in Delhi, where the Faded first appeared back in April. It wasn't a huge stretch to figure that finding Patient Zero would give our Immunologist the DNA samples he needs to complete the vaccine, so we'll definitely undertake the search, although there's no way we're going to deliver Patient Zero back to the CDC when we find him.

the initial board state looked quite good. All three of the starting hot spots were only one jump away from Atlanta, and there are no cities with 3 faded on them.

Unfortunately, no one began with any black cards in hand, so we can't start searching for Patient Zero immediately. Finding out that our best searcher was a traitor didn't really help on that front either.

The team, in player turn order, was:

Jeff as Chan, the dispatcher (Pilot, Veteran, family with Jade)Myself as Hunter, the colonel (Grizzled, Overcautious x 2, rivals with Jade)Ryan as Caitlyn, the scientistMatt as Jade, the quarantine specialist (Forecaster, family with Chan, rivals with Hunter)

Chan began the game by getting over to Jakarta and taking care of the Avian Flu problem there, and then drew the dreaded turn one Epidemic. Chicago was the lucky card chosen from the bottom of the deck, and then on the infection step, both Tokyo and Chicago were drawn, causing two outbreaks on the first turn.

The game went downhill after that. The group went into panic mode, tying to clean up the massive explosion of both Blubonic Plague and Avian Flu that had sprung up out of nowhere, and while doing that, C0dA was slowly getting worse in Asia.

We did manage to cure and eradicate Tenacious Y, but trying to slow down red and blue left us without enough resources to do much about C0dA, and we lost the game to massive outbreaks in India and the Middle East, which left Baghdad a collapsing mess and also caused massive rioting in the surrounding areas. At least C0dA didn't break out into any new cities.

For end game upgrades, we pulled an Undertale on Hunter and filled him with DETERMINATION, allowing him to take one more scar, and we also upgraded Jade with Flexible, in an attempt to make her the new searcher.

The early October game was quite unsatisfying, what with the turn one epidemic that just snowballed into not being able to do anything, so we decided to push ahead into

OCTOBER again.

After drawing the initial infection cards, the final military base sticker got placed in Osaka. Zodiac must be based in Japan. At least with no more stickers left, we won't have to do that particular part of the setup again.

Ryan decided to head off with another group to do a game of Space Cadets, but Nick showed up just as we were finishing the first October game, so they just traded chairs.

Myself as Hunter, the colonel (Grizzled, Determined, Overcautious x2, rivals with Jade)Matt as Jade, the quarantine specialist (Forecaster, Flexible, family with Chan, rivals with Hunter)Jeff as Chan, the dispatcher (Pilot, Veteran, family with Jade)Nick as Thomas, the medic

Our goal for this game was to find Patient Zero, which we utterly failed to do in the first October game. Fortunately, this time we had some black cards to work with.

We started by cleaning up the hot spots in New York and Osaka, while Jade dropped a remote quarantine token on Riyadh. The first part of the game was uneventful, with everyone mostly just building up their hands for cures and searching. Tenacious Y was the first disease to get a cure again, followed by Blubonic Plague. Hunter got flatfooted in Istanbul, and received a third scar when some faded showed up while he was there. Fortunatly, the DETERMINATION of Hunter allowed him to take the scar without being lost.

After the second epidemic, we figured out that between Chan and Hunter, we had enough black cards to find Patient Zero. Unfortunately, a faded was standing right there, so Chan would have to get Hunter out of there once he completed his portion of the search. That was doable though, so Hunter headed to Delhi and did his part. At the end of his turn, Hunter drew epidemic number three, which pushed the Patient Zero target one more space down the search track, which meant that Chan no longer had the cards he needed to reach it.

Jade was up next, and did her usual trick of throwing quarantine tokens all over the place. One of the cards Jade drew though was Tehran, the city right next to Delhi.

Chan figured that, if Jade played the Borrowed Time event in her hand, he would have just enough actions to1. Move Jade to Hunter in Delhi2. Move Jade to Tehran3. Move himself over to Jade in Tehran4. Take the Tehran card from Jade5. Move himself to Delhi6. Preform the search with the now extra black card in his hand and complete it.

Having to do it that way ment that Jade, Chan, and Hunter would all be stuck in faded cities when the dust settled, and none of them would escape without scars. Hunter would be lost.

After having discovered his trusted friend, Private Ryan, was the leak, and already teetering on the edge, he told Chan to do it. His subordinates might be traitors, but HE was going to be a hero, dammit.

As Chan closed in on his location, Hunter defended Patient Zero from a mob of faded. Chan successfully got Patient Zero out, and Hunter went down in a blaze of glory.

As expected, Patient Zero held just the DNA samples that our Immunologist was looking for, and he now had everything he needed to formulate the vaccine.

OPEN PACKAGE 7

We have the vaccine! The time for half measures is over!

OBJECTIVE DESTROYED: Quarantine seven faded cities

Inside package seven was a bunch of Vaccine Factories, the actual vaccines they produce, two more objectives, an additional action reference card for everyone, the immunologist character card, and instructions to open up EVERY DOSSIER DOOR LEFT.

NEW OBJECTIVE: Have three vaccine factories on the board.

NEW OBJECTIVE: Vaccinate 6 faded cities.

NEW ROLE: Immunologist - Remove all faded figures from your city when doing the Vaccinate action. (You must still spend one dose per figure.) Once per turn, you may use the Vaccinate action to affect an adjacent city.

NEW RULE: Create Vaccine - Vaccine factories function just like research stations, except that at the end of every turn, after drawing player cards but before the infect step, each one generates a vaccine dose.

NEW ACTION: Pick up doses - While at a vaccine factory, you may pick up as many doses from that factory as you want for a single action, and place the doses on your character card.

NEW ACTION: Vaccinate - Spend a vaccine token from your character card to remove one faded figure from your city or, if the city has no faded figures, vaccinated that city. Vaccinated cities are marked with an orange sticker. Any city that has been Vaccinated cannot have faded figures placed on it.

NEW RULE: Zodiac Interferes - Spend one additional action to preform the Vaccinate action for each military base in your region.

NEW EQUIPMENT: - Aerosol Unit (x3) - Discard this and spend one dose of vaccine when preforming the Vaccinate action to remove all faded figures and Vaccinate the city.

Wow. that is a lot to take in all at once. Fairly straightforward though. We need to build vaccine factories, let them build up a supply of vaccine doses, then pick the doses up and deliver them to the C0dA infected areas. As I predicted back in the September report, the military bases are now a liability, as they interfere with distribution of the vaccine. The good news is that we already sabotaged the Hong Kong one in Asia, where C0dA mostly is.

Armed with our new weapons, we set about trying to get some vaccine factories built. When Jade's turn came around, she took the Indecisive scar, while Chan was hit with a case of Monophobia, under the assumption that we really haven't used roadblocks yet and aren't likely to start now, and that all the searching is done.

We got some vaccine factories set up in Lagos, Ho Chi Minh, and Montréal, completing the factory objective, and Thomas began treating faded in Khartoum. Along with the Patient Zero objective and the Blubonic Plague and Tenacious Y cures, that ment we only needed the Avian Flu cure to win the game. Chan had 3 of the 4 red cards needed, and could get Thomas over to the proper city to trade for the last one.

Unfortunately, on the infect phase of the turn immediately before Chan would have won, Beijing was drawn, causing a chain outbreak into Seoul, causing the outbreak track to hit 8 and losing the game.

As our end game upgrades, we made the factories in Lagos and Ho Chi Minh permanent.

I'm disappointed that we lost October, but we are very nicely set up for November. We'll have two factories going right out of the gate, and with the limit on military base stickers reached, Zodiac can't touch us in Asia. We still need to deal with that base in Paris however.

What an epic conclusion to the search for Patient Zero! That's awesome.

I know! I could not have scripted it better. From the initial plan, to losing all hope when the epidemic hit, to then getting a faint glimmer back when the Tehran card was drawn, every step of the process seemed to be designed to generate maximum drama. By far the best couple turns of Pandemic I've ever played.

A shame that we ended up losing the game anyway. Jade could have used her last turn to self sacrifice and guarantee the win, but after taking one scar on the search, taking a second didn't seem to be a good idea, so we just gambled on the top of the infection deck.